


I wish that I could tell you I'm sorry and mean it (and I wish that I could say I didn't know)

by angelica_barnes



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Break Up, Broken Engagement, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Idiots in Love, Love Stories, Multi, best friends fall in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 14:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15245700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelica_barnes/pseuds/angelica_barnes
Summary: I have a best friend. That's you. One day we meet Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan by chance in a bar. I fall in love with Seb, and you with Chris.And then we find out they're gay for each other!!!(That goes surprisingly well.)





	I wish that I could tell you I'm sorry and mean it (and I wish that I could say I didn't know)

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly cannot tell you why I wrote this

I met you starting the school year after junior high. We were both scared shitless to be freshman and it helped that we had each other to talk to. Despite all this, we also had different dreams. I’d always try to change yours, and you disagreed with mine.

There was never anything I’d wanted more than love. The idea of having someone long for you and only you was always something that set my heart aflutter, and so I spent my time writing love stories. But I always wished for one of my own.

You, however, didn’t understand the concept of love. You hadn’t felt it - always a late bloomer when it came to things like emotions or ideals; reality was sometimes pushing the boundaries of your imagination too far - but you wanted it, something that wasn’t as messed up as your parents’ marriage ended up being.

You were logical whereas I was creative. You insisted that you’d never fall in love, that you didn’t want to get married; I believed in soulmates and true love’s kiss and all that crap from the Disney movies I hated. And we spent hours on end debating this, how I said you’d find love because you needed it and you insisted I wouldn’t because I wanted it.

And no, I never loved you and you never loved me. This isn’t one of those best-friends-fall-in-love-with-each-other stories, at least not us two, so get it out of your minds right now.

Instead, when I was twenty-one and finally old enough to drink, I dragged you to a bar. Mostly we sat in the corner and wished to go home, but I was adamant that we stick it out. After all, I wanted new experiences like this - I wanted to be brave. You were just along for the ride.

And across the room I caught sight of two men.

 

-

 

Two years later, that night in the bar long engraved in my memory and serving absolutely no purpose with its blurry dialogue than to take up space that could be occupied by daydreams, and I’d found love. You had too.

Mine was named Sebastian, soft and kind-hearted, with a sweet laugh and a tongue that spoke Romanian and English. A handsome face, adorned with stubble and bright blue eyes, his hair on the long side and dark. His eyes twinkled when he smiled, and I could feel his dimples against my cheeks when we kissed, and I knew that he was the one for me by the way my heart constricted whenever my eyes lingered too long on his left hand.

You, you found Seb’s best friend. A man named Chris Evans, who owned a dog named Dodger and wore soft sweaters and hugged more enthusiastically than a child would a teddy bear, and he spoke up for you and laughed with you and made you feel safe in a world in which almost everything male and breathing scared you. You still didn’t believe in the one, but you believed in love, and that was enough for me, for now.

 

-

 

About three years into my relationship with Sebastian, I noticed his longing glances across the room at Chris, and their whispered conversations and slight blushes whenever the other was around. I knew they loved each other, maybe not quite to the extent that I’d hoped but I knew they had feelings, and I thought I might encourage them to follow their hearts for one another once upon a time and find happily ever after.

But then I’d look at you, and see your face, and realize that after everything you’d been through, I simply couldn’t break you and Chris up for the sake of the satisfaction of my shipper’s heart, and so I buried the urge and stayed contentedly curled in Sebastian’s arms.

Approaching my twenty-fourth birthday and Sebastian’s twenty-seventh, it was three years, six months and nine days into our relationship.

He got down on one knee, and blinded by my love for him and the envy in Chris’ eyes as he held your hand, I laughed breathlessly and said yes.

The ring on my finger felt as light as my life and as heavy as my heart.

 

-

 

You still didn’t want to get married. Chris knew this, and therefore wouldn’t propose to you, despite his clear desire for a wedding such as Sebastian and I’s with you. But I knew that his jealousy was partly of me, for whose hands I held and ring I wore, because no matter how much Chris loved you, he loved Sebastian equally, if not more.

And normally I wouldn’t be telling anyone this, because what would be the point of marrying Sebastian if I believed that his love story would become the forefront of mine, but I knew that he would go through with this engagement and marry me for any reason but his inevitable happiness with someone else, because he was always the kind of person to be foolish like that. To think I’d choose my contentment over his; ha! I was almost offended when I thought of it.

But no matter, he loved me and that was why he was marrying me now. And I loved him, hence my acceptance of his rather unexpected proposal.

And then into my life, while I was trying on dresses at a local bride boutique and as easily as pain leaked into Chris’ eyes whenever I walked into the room, stumbled Josh Claire.

 

-

 

He spilled his champagne onto my dress, and I screamed in alarm, right into the phone through which you were telling me about the grad student you’d met downtown, Aaron Jenkins, and he began to apologize profusely. I shouted at him for a bit, mostly in shock and a bout of panic that always came whenever something went wrong, and then I calmed down and he started snarking at me about how I shouldn’t have been in the way.

To say I was appalled would be an understatement.

I hated him! I decided. I absolutely loathed him; I would not speak to him, or touch him, and certainly not travel with him to refill his coffee and fix me up a new dress, no, I wouldn’t, because I hated him and I would never like to speak with him again. Over dinner that night I told Sebastian this, and watched in delight as his lips quirked up into a smile, and the night ended with my slapping him for finding my mishap so amusing and his smile against mine as I laughed through my attempts to scold him.

The next day at work, while I studied a case file and you did the same with an evidence folder, I told you of Josh Claire and his obnoxiousness, and you informed me of Aaron Jenkins and his blissfully naive smile while he served you intelligent conversation about the sociopathic tendencies of Sherlock Holmes over some salads at the local Fresh City, and neither of us knew it then but we were in love.

 

-

 

Josh turned out to be an arrogant prat for most of our chats from then on, as we met up accidentally from time to time. I learned he was a historian, a professor studying and teaching medieval times at a college in the area, and that he was twenty-four just like me and as stubborn as a donkey when he wished to be, as in, always. But he could be caring if he wanted, and he was quite the debate partner, and I soon found myself seeking him out.

He’d recently been dumped by his own fiance, a beautiful pale blonde girl whose name I never learned, a childhood friend of his. I thought this was adorable, yet sad, and he seemed to disagree but never dwelled on the topic for long. He wasn’t one for discussing personal problems, though I caught him eyeing my ring multiple times and often wondered if he was wishing it away or simply wondering who I belonged to.

You belonged to Aaron, plain and simple, and I figured this out when I was one day curled on the couch with my cat and Sebastian barged in, home early from set and looking flustered and upset, bothered by something. I didn’t want to nag him, but it seemed all I had to do was stare and suddenly he was pouring everything out to me in one long explosive tangle of truths, and I let myself entertain him for as long as it needed to last.

His story went in all sorts of different directions, forwards and backwards and sideways, when he forgot a detail or became distracted or made an off-hand comment, and I soon came to understand that you had broken it off with Chris, had figured out that you were Aaron’s indefinitely and I could not have stopped you from going after him even if I wanted to because finally, finally you’d found somebody who made you believe in the one, and you now not only believed in it, but you also believed you’d found him. And I was beyond happy for you, as was Chris and as was Sebastian, but still Sebastian could not help but worry for his friend, cold and broken on what was once your couch and now only his alone.

And I understood, in these moments of listening to the one I loved ramble, that I would never be enough for him.

Because I hadn’t found the one in Sebastian. I’d found the first.

And little did I know who’d be the last.

 

-

 

Sebastian, over the weeks after Chris and your break up, became slightly withdrawn and held out. I understood his plight and let him be, to think and feel and decipher his emotions until he could finally face that what he’d always believed to be a complex array of wishes was simply a well-known and uncomplicated fact.

Sebastian Stan was in love with Chris Evans, and Chris Evans was in love with Sebastian Stan.

The way my first love broke this to me was so simple, so perfect, so broken and apologetic and empty that I could not help but offer him an encouraging smile, one of love and faith and the strong belief that he loved me even if not in the way I’d always hoped.

“I’m sorry.”

And I forgave him simply enough as well.

“It’s okay.”

 

-

 

I normally would’ve called you up to tell you about how empty my left hand felt now that Sebastian’s promise to always love me had been moved to my right hand, as a reminder that not all love lasts forever but it doesn’t have to be romantic to be real. But instead I woke up the next morning and pulled on a pair of heeled boots, some skinny jeans, a loose t-shirt and a jacket and bustled out the door with only my keys.

I bumped into somebody on the street and felt the warm tingling of the coffee burning my belly as it splashed against my shirt and soaked my front, and I heard a sarcastic comment about how I should really look where I was going.

I was about to tell Josh the same when I noticed his eyes, twinkling in such a contrast to the always-noteable slight downturn of his lips, and I let my own stretch into a smile.

Maybe my one wasn’t Sebastian, but I’d found him alright.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> because I myself have no idea.
> 
> but i hope you enjoyed! :)


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